Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi and Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman (left) at the Saudi Economic Association conference titled "Economies of Energy" in Riyadh late Tuesday evening. — SPA
RIYADH — Saudi Arabia has revved up crude production to its highest rate on record, feeding unexpectedly strong demand from foreign refiners and increased capacity at home. Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi told reporters late on Tuesday after opening a conference of the Saudi Economic Association that the Kingdom produced some 10.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude in March, a figure that would eclipse its previous recent peak of 10.2 million bpd in August 2013, according to records going back to the early 1980s. Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman, deputy minister of petroleum and mineral resources, chairman of the executive c of the Saudi Center for Energy Efficiency, and honorary president of the Saudi Economic Association, emphasized the importance of managing energy consumption in the Kingdom to curb the growth of consumption. He was addressing the first session of the 18th annual conference (Economies of Energy ) of the Saudi Economic Association here Wednesday. Naimi said he expected oil prices that have languished near six-year lows to improve in the near future. “The Kingdom is still ready to help bring back stability to the market and improve prices in a reasonable and suitable manner, but with the participation of the main producing and exporting countries and based on clear principles and high transparency, so the Kingdom or the Gulf countries or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) countries do not shoulder that alone,” he said. The Saudi production figure also likely reflects some additional domestic refinery demand. The 400,000 bpd Yanbu Aramco Sinopec Refining Co (Yasref) refinery, a joint venture between state oil firm Saudi Aramco and China's Sinopec, has been steadily ramping up production this year and was due to reach full capacity by mid-February. A venture with Total started up in late 2013. Saudi refineries ran a record 2.2 million bpd of crude in December, up from around 1.5 million bpd two years earlier, according to the Joint Oil Data Initiative database. Naimi also reiterated that Saudi Arabia was not competing with US shale oil, and took the chance to talk about the Kingdom's own development of its shale natural gas resources. Saudi expects to begin producing some 20 million to 50 million cubic feet per day of shale gas next year, rising to 500 million cfd by 2018, he said. The Kingdom's has 300 trillion cubic feet of extractable natural gas reserves, he added. — SG
